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April 30 Sunday Bicycle touring France -- free bicycle camping at a beautiful field of bright yellow canola near Dijon We packed up our cycle touring gear and left earlier this morning -- around 9 AM. The sky was still leaden. As I emerged from our bicycle touring tent door, raindrops fell. Sharon asked if I wanted to wait. But a quick survey of the sky told me it could be like this all day. Surprisingly, since it is a Sunday, stores were open. Sharon says she doesn't like not knowing when things will be open or closed. It causes unpleasant surprises at inopportune times. Like tomorrow we will find out when we need groceries nothing will be open. I bought a baguette and a flute. I actually found I like the flute better. It is like a giant baguette, but tastes the same as a baguette, unlike the large "restaurant" loaves which taste different. People seemed to be buying more than usual -- not a good observation -- stocking up. Saw quite a number of baguettes strapped to bike rear carriers or popping up from saddle bags where the owner had set them on end. I've only seen this while bicycle touring France. Found a muddy stream and we pulled our touring bikes to a stop to polish off the last of that prune jam. Sharon didn't aid me in the least. I've grown quite fond of it lately. I tell her that jam with sugar is a killer. It must be like Sardegna Sardinia wine. We don't like no sweet wine. Cycled through a large center, Chalon. It was like a ghost town. The streets and roads were deserted. We were in an industrial section on a Sunday, so that helped. We are getting bored of all the flatland cycling. Farmer's fields of tilled brown earth are captivating for only so long. The road we are bicycle touring is so far away from the Saone River that we can't even see the water. Our cycle ride on D2 turned out to be fantastic. Scenic France at its best. A small road twisting along a sparkling stream amidst meadows of yellow flowers and green grass. Lots of trees. Very tranquil. An eight lane auto strata just over a hill had ceased to exist for us in this world. Cycled into Beaune, another touristy vineyard area. There are lots of tour buses and wine tasting places. On D2, by La Forge, Sharon found a perfect free biking camp spot by a stream, tucked behind some evergreen trees. Alas, it was too early to stop pedalling. Like the bartender who asked the horse, I asked Sharon, "Why the long face?" "I'm mourning the loss of our perfect camp spot." "According to our map," I tell her, "there is going to be forest all day." We continue cycling sedately along. Some trees have clumps of leaves growing in various round places. Sharon calls them trees with hairballs. We cycle past people fishing. We climb on our heavy touring bikes for a ways and rejoin D18. In a short distance, we cycle onto route D118 and fly down a twelve percent grade to a little dilapidated mountain valley town. There was also a nice downhill ride from town on a tiny road to join D33. D33 has us pedalling easily, following along the Borgogne Canal. The pavement is new, flat and fast. France bicycle touring at its finest! I look for free biking camp spots. But we go through village after village without seeing anything suitable for bicycle camping in between the towns. Eventually D33 runs out and so does our forest. Whoops. I didn't think we would cycle this far today. We cycle across the autostrata, going to Dijon. We see a road above a field that has a road running up to it. As we consider the possibilities of finding something up there, two girls come riding by on horses on the road above. They pass by the intersecting road we are standing beside, straddling our fully loaded touring bicycles. They ride a ways towards town, then stop and turn around and come down the road we are waiting on and ride past us. The spot looks great. We push our bikes up the steep dirt road. Unfortunately, the land by the upper road is neither flat nor accessible with all the surrounding bush. We push our touring bikes along the dirt track. I see a spot between two pine trees --it's just large enough for our little bicycle touring tent. Only one problem: the camp spot is not exactly flat. We decide to set up on it anyway. The view of the valley is wonderful, but our sleeping bags are sideways to the slope, rather than lengthwise which presents a rolling problem when I try to lie on my Thermarest. It is still cloudy, with a few sunny breaks. I took a picture of symmetry with trees along the horizon in the field below. It is late, and the light is low, so I had to underexpose by a stop with the 200 mm lens and still had to shoot with only 1/125 second. I didn't feel any too rock solid either, so maybe it will be a picture of blurred symmetry. Lots of flowers as we cycle along the roadside. The French all have flower gardens in front of their houses which are charming to admire as we bike past. Canola blooms scent the air around us. Pew. Smelly stuff. It is very dark. I don't see any stars. Are they on strike too, like the rest of France? Or did someone forget to pay the electric bill? Earlier, as we cycled through the rural countryside, I saw a bright yellow field of canola with tire tracks on a hillside that looked like a giant slalom ski run zigging down. Cycled past another field where the canola crop had already grown higher that our heads as we pedalled past on our overloaded touring bicycles. On our France bicycle tour, we managed to cycle 130 kilometres today. |
